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What colour is the glow? more than likely thats telling us that your filament is intact. But without the interlock chain closed the laser wont come on. As suggested, remove the laser, fan, power supply from the medical device, and build a controller.

What colour is the glow? more than likely thats telling us that your filament is intact. But without the interlock chain closed the laser wont come on. As suggested, remove the laser, fan, power supply from the medical device, and build a controller.

It glows blue for about one and half min then, I guess it shuts the laser down...it does keep the fan going though.
I'll have to look more into building a controller, or perhaps having someone make one for me, or show me a picture of the parts....

It glows blue for about one and half min then, I guess it shuts the laser down...it does keep the fan going though.
I'll have to look more into building a controller, or perhaps having someone make one for me, or show me a picture of the parts....

Either the controller from the machine ( Not sure what it is? ) is shutting it down or the tube is overheating. On the tube there is a little ... damn I forget what it's called ... Anyway, there is a switch that opens when it reaches a certain temperature, in turn breaking the interlock and turning the laser off. If it IS overheating you will here it go 'click' when it shuts off, and it'll click again once it cools off a little.

My only other suggestion is that either the plasma is going out due to the pressure changing from the heat of the tube or there is a fault somewhere causing it to go out after a while. I doubt both of these though, JDSU Ar ion lasers are rock solid and practically live forever unless you drive them until they catch fire, they even use the cathode filament from a 5W coherent Ar ion tube.

I don't think that it's overheating per say.....When it does turn off, the tube is not really hot to the touch, or seems that hot.
I'm hoping that with the controller all these troubles may correct themselves....
I also read too that it may need to be re-set after a shutdown...again I'm hoping that a controller may fix this..

Thank you everyone for all your input so far....I'm excited to get this up and running!

Either the controller from the machine ( Not sure what it is? ) is shutting it down or the tube is overheating. On the tube there is a little ... damn I forget what it's called ... Anyway, there is a switch that opens when it reaches a certain temperature, in turn breaking the interlock and turning the laser off. If it IS overheating you will here it go 'click' when it shuts off, and it'll click again once it cools off a little.

A thermal protection circuit/switch?

That would be my first guess. If you look at this photo, you can see that the fan and the rear of the laser are NOT connected by any tubing.
That fan MUST pull air through the laser to cool it. It may not "feel" hot, but the plasma in the tube is many thousands of degrees.

I would posit that the fan is NOT pulling air through the laser. It is overheating and shutting down.

Remove the laser, PSU, and fan. Connect the fan to the rear of the laser with some dryer vent tubing.

In the remote access plug, jump the "1 pin to the 3 pin" and jump the "2 pin to the 13 pin." That will allow you to run it at idle.

DO NOT run it any more without the fan connected to the rear of the laser!

^^^^^Will do...i'll stop running until I get it set-up a little better.
It did have some foam around the base there, but it was almost completely degraded and had become pretty nasty.

I'll have to get it all out of the housing and figure out all the wires and grounds, then I can attach some hosing to the end of the tube to the fan.

Thanks again, i'll get back to ya'll if I run into any more troubles and hopefully have some nice photos of a working Argon Ion Laser!

That is probably why it was pulled from the original unit. The degraded foam allowed the suction to be reduced. That reduced the amount of air flowing over the laser. That caused it to overheat and shut down.

Instead of the service person being ethical and simply replacing the foam shroud for a few bucks. He/she, sold them a new laser unit, for many thousand bucks.

Sounds about right to me....
I did get a pretty good price on it, considering that it's thousands of dollars new like you said.
$100+60 shipping....not bad for a (hopefully) working laser with PSU and fiber connector.

I'll be taking it out of the housing tomorrow and getting it all set-up hopefully. I will snap some photo's of the tubes and other working and post them so ya'll can see what tube it is and hopefully some other info about it.

You got an excellent deal for a unit like that - hopefully the tube comes to life once you get it set up properly.

Here's what I recommend:

-Remove the tube, fan and PSU from the cabinet - the original control circuit is pretty useless since you don't have the other machine that connected to it.

As others have said there are schematics available on Sam's FAQ about how to build your own control interface.

- Grab some dryer vent hose or something similar to couple the laser head to the cooling fan.

- Once you have it set up with the fan properly, on the DB25 user interface port on the PSU you can short pin 1 to 3 (interlock) and pin 2 to 13 (discharge on) - this will start the laser and run it in idle mode (about 5mW for multiline units). The glow you were seeing is likely from the heated cathode which runs any time the PSU is plugged in.

You got an excellent deal for a unit like that - hopefully the tube comes to life once you get it set up properly.

Here's what I recommend:

-Remove the tube, fan and PSU from the cabinet - the original control circuit is pretty useless since you don't have the other machine that connected to it.

As others have said there are schematics available on Sam's FAQ about how to build your own control interface.

- Grab some dryer vent hose or something similar to couple the laser head to the cooling fan.

- Once you have it set up with the fan properly, on the DB25 user interface port on the PSU you can short pin 1 to 3 (interlock) and pin 2 to 13 (discharge on) - this will start the laser and run it in idle mode (about 5mW for multiline units). The glow you were seeing is likely from the heated cathode which runs any time the PSU is plugged in.

Thank you very much for your help...this all is answering many of my questions....
I have a offer from Dave for the JDS control unit, and another from Timelablasers for a hand made unit.
Tomorrow I will take it all out of the original housing, trying to keep track of everything, get myself a piece of dyer tubing for the fan, and if all works out, get it at least to Idle...I feel that with my inexperience this will be a bit of a learning curve, but again, with all of your help there is still light at the end of the Argon Tube!
We'll start with a steady idle glow....pics coming hopefully!